Dennis Haarsager's rolling environmental scan for electronic media. "Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us." --Jerry Garcia "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then." --Bob Seger

Twitter @haarsager

Thursday, 07 December 2006

Boyle Heights Public Television

Public broadcasting web sites often get the rap of being mostly glorified program guides. But because the web's inherent low time spent per page view, it takes a ton of page views to generate the reach and frequency necessary for an effective promotional message compared to the eight hours average weekly time spent listening per listener to public radio stations or less than two hours time spent viewing (and that's household viewing) for public television stations. We just need to think of the audience flowing differently -- from station to web, not so much vice versa.

That's not to say that the web can't be an effective medium on its own. Last week I saw an excellent example of that -- a profile of the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles at public television station KCET's web site. There, Jackie Kain's staff has put together a terrific set of Flash video and audio portraits of that community. Be sure to check out the panorama. Boyle Heights has its own public television station. Very nice! Link: KCET. --Dennis